April 09, 2012
As an amateurish but enthusiastic student of Marine Corps history, I remain fascinated with the battle of the Chosen Reservoir. One of the more interesting aspects of this battle was the performance of the various firearms the Marines used 60 years ago. Most of the Browning-designed guns did pretty well, but the M1 Carbine and the Garand rifle did not function with their customary reliability. A lot of this had to do with ammunition, which is what I’m dealing with here. Cold weather can have an impact on the performance of ammunition and there were a number of reports that the point of impact changed on various firearms shot at the Frozen Chosen.
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March 28, 2012
All of this current interest in revolvers that shoot several calibers from the same cylinder has set some handgunners minds a'racing. Since the Taurus Judge and S&W Governor shoot a .410 shotgun shell, as well as a .45 Colt, is there any tactical advantage to loading the cylinder in a pattern? For example, you could load two .410s with No. 4 shot, followed by two .45 Colt rounds with 225-grain JHP bullets and top it off with a single round of .410 with 000 buckshot—in a five-shot Judge. The Smith & Wesson entry is different in that it is a six-shooter and also will work with .45 ACPs in special clips. Therefore, the options are considerably wider. You could go with two .45 Colts, two .410s and two .45 ACPs. The possibilities are quite varied with a revolver. The basic idea is to have the best load for a series of situations readily available in the gun.
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March 21, 2012
It's no secret that the economy is hurting and that few Americans are spending heavy on recreational activities and equipment. Still, lots of folks are involved in the shooting sports and many are newcomers. And of course, most of us are interested in managing our funds to get the most for our money. So here's my take on where you need to put your money at the beginning of a career in handgun shooting. Obviously, the heart of the matter is making your money go as far as possible. It's the old homily of “waste not, want not.”
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March 15, 2012
For 32 years—from 1954 until 1986—the best deal in the Smith & Wesson catalog was the Model 28, a revolver built on the N frame and chambered for the .357 Mag. cartridge. Before S&W assigned model numbers to all products, the maker called this gun the Highway Patrolman. Made with the user's choice of either 4- or 6-inch barrels, the Highway Patrolman had a matte-blue finish, with a very plebeian exterior. There was no grooving on the barrel rib or rear sight and no choices in sights, trigger or hammer. I have seen Target and Magna grips on them, almost always in oiled, checkered walnut. In other words, the Model 28 was a plain .357 Mag. revolver of the largest and strongest type. You got a lot of gun for your money and that made the Model 28 popular with cash-strapped police agencies and individual officers.
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March 13, 2012
Remember back in the 1970s when Smith & Wesson offered a series of beautiful die-struck belt buckles? A full collection of these handsome artifacts from a never-to-return era would be worth a lot more than what a 70s-era collector paid for them. Sadly, mine does not include every buckle in the series. It does, however, include the famed “gun box” buckle. This variation was a metal rendering of the top of the boxes found in the first few years of the Smith & Wesson partnership. The top of those boxes portrayed the tip-up revolver contained in the box. The original boxes are of course quite valuable, but the belt buckle is also collectible. Original boxes were made from a material known as gutta percha, a form of sap from a particular tree.
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March 07, 2012
I love that old saying about “what goes around, comes around.” It means that history runs in cycles and what was once popular might be popular once again. We went through a long cycle of interest in larger, more powerful handguns for just about every use, including personal defense and concealed carry. The present conventional wisdom holds that the concealed-carry handgun must be small and light, but adequately powerful. To accomplish this, gunmakers have evolved both the conventional pistol and the even older revolver designs to new guns that fill the bill. All three of the major wheelgun makers now offer a light powerful snubnosed revolver with a polymer frame—Ruger LCR, S&W Bodyguard, Taurus 85PLYB2. The new designed automatics are so numerous as to be hard to enumerate.
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March 02, 2012
I overheard a gun store conversations the other day that set my mind to thinking about the process of getting all the shots into the center of the target. One guy was talking to an experienced gun salesman and complaining about the work of a well-known custom pistolsmith. The smith had done an accuracy job on a pistol by installing a premium barrel and meticulously fitting it to the frame and slide.
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February 27, 2012
I live in the state of Nevada, a glorious place of open spaces and gun-friendly politicians. For a gun guy, you couldn't find a better place to live and work. Like all of the other states, Nevada does its best to maintain the streets and highways to be safe places for all Americans to use. That includes the signs that abound our roads, telling you where you are and other important things, like the distance to Las Vegas. Apparently, some citizens seem to feel that those signs are there for other reasons. Sadly some of these people have guns.
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February 17, 2012
A reader e-mailed with a question about the use and actual shape of feed ramps in modern pistols. He had apparently witnessed a catastrophic failure in a popular brand off semi-automatic pistol chambered for the 9 mm Luger cartridge. From this, he had begun to believe that certain types of so-called “unsupported” feed ramps were inherently unsafe and the use of supported ones would eliminate failures of this type. First of all, the use of some kind of feed ramp is virtually required in all pistols for efficient operation, with some feed ramps integral to the barrel and others in the receiver. Some manufacturers even build a feed ramp into the magazine. I genuinely believe that no maker (and certainly not the one the reader had named) would ever offer a pistol for sale that had a dangerous design flaw. There is simply too much at stake. The design of a particular feed ramp is developed to achieve efficient operation and not to cut corners.
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February 10, 2012
Not long ago in this blog, I mentioned the folding hammer on the Merwin, Hulbert revolvers. In doing so, I noted the interesting twist and pull system of selective ejection used on these guns. Several readers wrote to ask about that feature. I'm happy to once again talk about one of my two favorite odd-ball firearms that really differ from the norm. Merwin, Hulbert revolvers were Frontier-era wheelguns and contemporaries of the Colt, S&W and Remington big-bores that we all recognize.
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